THE

RIGHTS OF MAN.

CHAP. I.

OF NATURAL RIGHTS.

THERE

HERE never did, there never will, and there never can, exift, a legiflature, or any defcription of men, in any country, poffeffed of the right, or the power, of binding, and controuling pofterity to the END OF TIME: or, of commanding, FOR EVER, HOW the world fhall be governed, or wнO fhall govern it and THEREFORE, all fuch claufes, acts, or declarations, by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right, nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves NULL AND VOID.

Every age, and generation, must be as free to act for itself, in all cafes, as the ages and generations that preceded it. The vanity and prefumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most prepofterous and infolent of all tyrannies. Man

has no property in Man-neither has any generation a property in the generations that are to follow. A legiflature, or the people of any antecedent period, had no more right to difpofe of the people of the prefent day, or to bind, or controul them, in any fhape whatfoever, than the legiflature, or the people of the prefent day, have to difpofe of, bind, or controul, thofe who fhall live a hundred, or a thoufand years hence.

Every generation is, and must be competent to all the purposes which its occafions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants ceafe with him; and, having no longer any participations in the concerns of this world, he no longer has any authority, in directing who thall be its governors, or how its government shall be organized, or how adminiftered. I contend for the right of the living, and against their being willed away, and controuled, and contracted for, by the manufcript authority of the dead. There was a time when Kings difpofed of their crowns by will, upon their death-beds, and configned the people, like beafts of the field, to whatever fucceffor they appointed. This is now fo exploded, as fcarcely to be remembered, and fo monftrous, as hardly to be believed..

It is a general principle in governments, that no parent, or mafter, nor all the authority of the

legiflature,

legiflature, can bind or controul the perfonal freedom, even of an individual, beyond the age of twenty-one years;-on what ground of right, then, can any legislature bind all pofterity for ever? Those who have quitted the world, and those who are not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other, as the utmost stretch of mortal imagination can conceive; what poffible obligations, then can exift between them-what rule or principle can be laid down, that two non-entities, the one out of existence, and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world-that the one should controul the other to the end of time.

From what, or from whence, is the right of any human power derived to bind pofterity for ever? If fuch a principle ever exifted, it must now exist;-for whatever appertains to the nature of man, cannot be annihilated by man. It is the nature of man to die, and he will continue to die as long as he fhall continue to be born. Therefore, to fet up a political Adam, in whom all pofterity are bound for ever, it must be proved that this Adam poffeffed fuch a power or fuch a right.

Although laws which are made in one generation, often continue in force through fucceeding generations, they continue to derive their force. from the confent of the living, and are not repealed, not because they cannot be repealed, but because they are not, and the non-repealing, paffes for

confent. A former legiflature might as well have passed an act to have authorized themselves to live for ever, as to make their authority live for ever. The circumftances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change alfo; and, as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that have any right in it. That which may be thought right, and be found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong, and found inconvenient, in an another. In such cases who is to decide-the living or the dead? It fignifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but it fignifies much to the living to have a will in what fhall concern them.

Who is there in the world but man; and if we admit that man has rights, the confideration then will be what are thofe rights; and, how came man by them originally? The error of those who reafon by precedents, drawn from antiquity, refpecting the rights of man, is, that they do not go far enough into antiquity: They do not go the whole way: They stop in fome of the intermediate stages of a hundred, or a thousand years, and produce what was then done as a rule for the prefent day. This is no authority at all! If we travel ftill farther into antiquity, we fhall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and, if antiquity is to be authority, a thousand fuch authorities may

be

be produced fucceffively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we fhall come out right at laft, we fhall come to the time when man came from the hand of his maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his only title, and a higher cannot be given him.

We have now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his rights. As to the manner in which the world has been governed, from that day to this, it is no further any concern of ours, than to make a proper use of the errors, or the improvements, which the hiftory of it prefents. Those who lived a hundred, or a thoufand years ago, were then moderns, as we are now. If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live a hundred, or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as that we make a precedent of those who lived a hundred, or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving every thing, establish nothing. It is authority against authority, all the way till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man, at the creation. Here our enquiries find a refting place, and our reafon finds a home.

If a dispute about the rights of man had arose, at the distance of a hundred years from the creation, it is to this fource of authority they must have referred; and it is to the fame fource of au